After this start in 1921 our meetings in Munich became much more frequent. I took to having them not merely once a week but sometimes two mass meet¬ ings in a week ; in fact, at midsummer and the late autumn there were apt to be three. We always met now in the Circus Krone, and ascertained to our satis¬ faction that all our evenings were equally successful.
The result was a constant increase in the member¬ ship of the movement.
Our adversaries were naturally not going to sit down under such successes. So they decided to make one last effort by an act of terrorism to put a final spoke in the wheel of our meetings. The day of action arrived a few days later. A meeting in the Hofbrauhausfestsaal, at which I was to speak, was chosen for the final reckoning. Between six and seven in the evening of November 4th, 1921, I received the first positive news that the meeting was to be definitely broken up.
Owing to an unlucky chance, we had not under¬ stood about it earlier. That very day we had moved out of our glorious old offices in the Sterneckergasse into others, i.e., we were out of the old ones but were not yet in the new ones, because work was still going on in them. The result was that there was only a very feeble body of men to keep order in the meeting ;
nothing but a weak company of about forty-six men was on hand, and the alarm telephones were not in a condition to call up sufficient reinforcements in the course of a single hour.
I entered the vestibule of the hall at a quarter to eight and saw that there was no doubt whatever of the immediate intention. The hall was packed, and the police were stopping any more from entering. Our enemies, who had arrived very early, were inside the hall, and our friends were outside. The little body of guards were waiting for me in the vestibule. I had the